Hole19 Golf GPS & Range Finder

Review by eFreeware

If you already carry a phone onto the course and want one app to handle yardages and scoring, Hole19 is built for that. It covers distance measurement, a digital scorecard and round tracking, and it works with a Wear OS watch so the phone can stay in the bag. The free version carries ads, and the developer says more than four million golfers use it.

What makes it worth a closer look is the breadth of the free tier. You get GPS distances on a huge course catalog, scoring that records more than just your total, and a social layer for sharing rounds. The paid side leans into analysis: elevation-adjusted yardages, club suggestions, handicap calculation and shot-by-shot tracking. My read is that the free app covers the basics well, and Premium is for golfers who want their numbers explained rather than just displayed.

Distances and the course catalog

The core of the app is the rangefinder. It measures how far you are from the front, middle and back of the green, and it also shows distances to the main hazards and targets on the hole. The developer puts the catalog at more than 42,000 courses worldwide, which is the kind of coverage that means most players will find their home club already mapped.

Before a round, you can preview the hole layouts and see where the trouble sits. That is a planning tool rather than a playing one, and it strikes me as the most useful part for anyone visiting an unfamiliar course or preparing for a competition. Knowing the shape of a hole in advance changes which club comes out of the bag on the first tee.

Premium adds two distance features worth understanding. Plays Like distances adjust for elevation, so the number reflects how far the shot actually needs to travel rather than flat yardage. Distance arcs let you see landing areas and the yardages you want to avoid. Both are aimed at the same problem: a flat number is not always the number you should play.

Scoring, stats and round tracking

The digital scorecard records your score along with putts, fairways hit and greens in regulation. That is a sensible set of inputs because it lets the app build a picture of where strokes are going rather than just how many you took. You can keep score on the phone or on a Wear OS watch, so there is no need to pull a handset out on every green.

Premium expands this into a fuller record of your game. There is an overall statistics view covering how straight you hit your drives, how often you reach greens in regulation, your short game and your putting, a handicap calculator that follows global standards, and a shot tracker that logs individual shots through a round. Highlights collects the better moments of your golf history in one place, and you can attach notes to any hole to record how you want to play it next time.

Two smaller Premium conveniences stand out. Auto-change Hole moves the app to the next hole as you walk from green to tee, which removes a repeated bit of tapping. Game modes add flexible scoring options for solo rounds or groups. Neither is glamorous, but they are the sort of details that decide whether an app feels like it belongs in your pocket.

Watch support, Health Connect and the social side

Hole19 has a dedicated Wear OS app with customizable complications, giving you distances, scoring and stats at a glance. Premium goes further with detailed flyover maps on the watch. If you prefer to play without your phone in hand, the watch side is where that preference is either supported or not, and the developer has clearly invested in it.

Completed rounds go to Health Connect as golf exercise sessions, with steps, distance walked and calories included. That means a round counts toward your daily activity goals, and anything else connected to Health Connect can read the session too. For golfers who track activity generally, it avoids a round disappearing from the record simply because it was golf rather than a run.

There is also a social layer: a feed for connecting with other golfers, sharing scores and posting course photos, plus LivePlay for organizing rounds and following scores in real time. Monthly challenges offer a chance at prizes. This is optional, and how much you use it will depend on whether you want your rounds to be a shared activity or a private one.

What it needs and what to weigh

The app is free to download and supported by ads, with Premium features available through in-app purchasing. The developer lists an ad-free experience among the Premium benefits. That is a normal arrangement for a free golf app, and it is worth deciding up front whether you would rather see ads or pay.

There is a device requirement to check before you commit. The developer no longer supports devices running Android 9 or below, so an older handset will not run the current version. If your phone is several years old, confirm the Android version first.

The other consideration is how the app is weighted. The free tier is generous with distances and scoring, while the features that interpret your game, such as handicap calculation, club recommendations and the fuller statistics, sit behind Premium. Someone who wants yardages and a scorecard can stay on the free version comfortably. Someone who wants the app to tell them why they are losing shots will be looking at the paid tier.

Who the app fits

This is for golfers who want their phone or watch to handle the arithmetic and the record-keeping. That covers a wide range of players: someone playing a weekly medal who wants accurate yardages and a proper scorecard, someone visiting new courses who benefits from previewing layouts, and someone who enjoys the social side of comparing rounds with friends.

The analytics side is likely to appeal most to players who already think in terms of fairways hit and putts per round. If you track those numbers in a notebook or a spreadsheet, the app offers a tidier home for them, and the Premium statistics and handicap calculator extend that into something closer to a season-long record.

The watch integration matters most for anyone who dislikes handling a phone during a round. Distances, scoring and stats on the wrist, with flyover maps on Premium, keep the phone where it belongs. If you play without a watch and are happy to glance at a handset, the same features are available there.

A free golf companion with a paid analytics tier

Hole19 has been on the Play Store since early 2015 and now sits at more than five million installs with a 4.8 average from a large number of ratings. That kind of record suggests an app that has settled into a routine of steady updates rather than one that appeared recently. The free tier covers the two things most golfers actually need: a distance to the green and somewhere to write down the score.

The recommendation depends on which golfer you are. If you want reliable yardages, hazard distances, a digital scorecard and the option of keeping everything on a Wear OS watch, the free version is a straightforward install. If you want elevation-adjusted distances, club suggestions, a handicap index and detailed statistics, Premium is where those live.

Check your Android version before you start, since Android 9 and below is no longer supported, and go in expecting a free app with advertising and optional purchases. On those terms, Hole19 is a well-established choice for golfers who want their round measured, scored and recorded in one place, with the depth of analysis left to your own judgment about how much you want to pay for it.

What's new in version 5.62.0

Fore! We're back with another swingin' update to make your golfing experience smoother than ever. See you on the course! Share your best round with us on Instagram @hole19golf 📱